Open School with Salad Hilowle, "The Black Beach: Moving Images between Swedish and Caribbean Shores"

Based on testimonies, shards and fragments in the margins of archives, this project uses artistic means to portray life on the former colony of Saint-Barthélemy. Departing from a silent film shot by Sten Nordensköld in 1952, Salad and Christian ask what role artistic research can play to complement conventional historiography to resist the circumscribed, racist framework of the colonial archive: What role does imagination, speculation, and historical fiction play in knowledge production? What are the possibilities, limits, and risks of such approaches? Questions that are examined in relation to music, theater, and film.

Later this fall The Black Beach is collaborating with the second year Graphic design & Illustration students at Konstfack, who are invited to engage with the material of their research. To remix, interpret, reconstruct and add to it in the form of a publication.

Salad Hilowle (born in 1986, Mogadishu, Somalia) is a Stockholm-based artist who traces historical narratives, excavates and ponders the impact of the African diaspora on history and how it permeates contemporary culture.

His work is research-driven, initiated by marginalized or forgotten stories that are articulated through a variety of materials and media, including film, installation, sculpture, photography, sound and performance. With a background in film, culture and media, Hilowle embraces a subjective reading of the archive and explores ideas of memory, place and visibility.

Open School is organized by the Visual Communication programme at Konstfack University of Arts, Crafts & Design

Language: English